First Wave
"The Believers"

Airdate: September 24, 2000

A Chicago-area version of America's Most Wanted is about to do a profile on serial killer Cade Foster, but is interrupted by the man himself and his favorite sidekick, Crazy Eddie. The take hostages and begin setting up a plan to broadcast their message to millions of homes. That's when things start to go wrong.

Gone, but the memory of him in a tight t-shirt lingers on.

Chicago's finest and Gua leader Caine are hot on their trail and one of the hostages gets loose, causing all sorts of problems for our heroes. There are lots of foreshadowing comments and red herrings tossed about until finally, in a move reminiscent of...

Aw hell, people, it's a cliffhanger. Do I have to spell it out for you?

He's dead, Jim.

But at least his corpse doesn't stink up the place like that ham Caine. While it doesn't come close to the over-the-top travesty that was his performance in "Tomorrow", Roger Cross as the not-Joshua is still horrible. As wooden and one-note as some of the guest-stars who've portrayed evil-Gua have been, they were infinitely better than this crude, stereotypical, melodramatic uber-villain that we've been subjected to ever since "The Trial of Joshua Bridges." I want my enigmatic-Joshua back, dammit. And I mean now!

The foreshadowing was pretty heavy-handed with an overabundance of talk of death and failure and such. The sleights of tongue weren't very sleight either. The surprise ending, or rather, the identity of the person who sets in motion the unsuprising ending, was pretty easy to guess as well. Subtlety is obviously not a concept that is used very often by the writers of First Wave. (Which explains that Joshua/Caine thing, doesn't it?)

As far as cliffhangers go, "The Believers" isn't too bad. For too long Foster has pulled his behind out of the fire without getting scorched. Fate was bound to sneak up and bite him in the ass sooner or later. In other words, Cade was due for some serious shit to hit the fan. And it don't get much more serious than dead.

Or supposedly dead.

All is not lost though, as the producer points out at the end. (That would be the fake-producer of the fake-show, by the way.) The studio's phones are ringing off the hook. The believers, Cade Foster's seemingly small army of the faithful are calling in. Whether to lend support, express disbelief, or simply cash in on the reward, we'll never know.

At least not until next season.

Providing there is a next season.

-- Linda M. Najera

First Wave airs at 7pm EST, Sundays on The Sci Fi Channel.

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